I didn’t believe you at first. We were standing in the kitchen. I shoved you – hard – when you told me about Adam, pushing you into the sink, wanting to believe you’d made it all up to hurt me, to make me hate Lydia again, even though she had long since stopped being important to me.
Your hip hit the handle of the drawer. You were in pain, bent double. Then you recovered and you lunged at me, your fury spilling out – our fury spilling out. We couldn’t hurt Lydia, so we tried to hurt each other instead, the blows coming fast, your fists and mine working rhythmically to do the most damage.
‘We’ll wake Harriet!’ you hissed.
Our fight ended almost as quickly as it had begun. ‘What are we doing?’ we said to one another, ashamed of our displaced anger.
We sat side by side at the kitchen table in the dark, my hand clutching yours. We cried. We cried for Cal, for Harriet. For Mum and Dad. We cried for each other. We cried for Christopher Walker.
A sound: loud and insistent.
You started and pulled away from me as the battering of the front door seemed to make it shake. We stood side by side in the hall, each holding our breath, not daring to move.
Your boy is hurt. He’s in the alley. You have to come now.
I shoved my bare feet into my shoes so they wouldn’t get cut to ribbons as I ran along the street.
It was a moment before I realised this couldn’t be the knock that would send us running to the alley where Cal lay covered in blood; it couldn’t be the knock that would mean he was dead.
‘Leave it, don’t open the door,’ you said, holding me back by the sleeve of my dress. ‘I don’t want to see anyone, not now.’
But the knocking was persistent and Lydia’s voice called out, ‘I just want to talk to you. I need to explain. I know you’re in there.’
You gave me a fearful look but then you nodded and I let her in.
Lydia pushed past us before the door was fully open. We followed her into the kitchen. ‘I have the right to explain,’ she said.
‘You have no rights,’ I replied, moving towards her, anger threatening to overwhelm me. You held my arm and I came close to hitting you in retaliation, failing once more to find the right target.
We didn’t offer Lydia a drink. We didn’t offer her a seat at our table, but she sat down anyway. Tension sparked between us.
‘I have to tell you what happened the night Cal died. I’d change it if I could, you must believe me. But what’s done is done.’ Lydia sat back in her seat and looked at each of us. I couldn’t read her expression. Defiance? Regret? A mixture of the two?
We didn’t speak. Our silence caused her to take a strand of her hair and twirl it between her fingers. ‘It really wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have foreseen any of it.’ She sighed deeply and looked away from us again. ‘Adam was full of indignation about my pregnancy. He was staying with us for the last couple of weeks of summer. Cal phoned and said he needed to see me, so I slipped out of the house. Adam followed me.’ Lydia stopped. She took a cigarette out of her bag and held a lighter to it. Then she inhaled as if her life depended on it.
‘I didn’t know Adam was there, I swear I didn’t,’ she continued, blowing smoke across the table.
You sat in total stillness, your face turned away from Lydia. We didn’t want to hear what she had to say but we knew we had to hear it. We needed to know what really happened the night that Cal was killed.
‘Adam came up behind us and grabbed hold of Cal. He pulled him into an alley, said he needed to be taught a lesson. It was like they said in court – one punch and he was down. There was nothing I could do. I just didn’t see it coming. Adam ran off. I think he was in shock when he saw Cal wasn’t moving. It was accidental; he didn’t mean to harm Cal the way he did. It was inconceivable that he could actually have killed somebody.’ Lydia stubbed out her cigarette and looked at each of us, trying to tell if we believed her.
‘And yet he did kill somebody,’ I said. ‘And then he let Christopher Walker take the blame. He died in prison, did you know that?’
Lydia looked at me. ‘I’m sorry about that, I really am, but the police told me I had to say it was Christopher Walker. They said he was dangerous, out of control. He had to be taken off the streets. If anyone’s to blame for his conviction, it’s the police.’
She lowered her voice as if the words she was saying shouldn’t really be heard. ‘They called me a nigger lover because of Cal. They were disgusting. They shouted at me as if I’d committed a crime. I was there for hours; they kept insulting me, wearing me down until I gave in. I didn’t want to hide what Adam had done but I had to, you must see that?’ She looked scared as she added, ‘Are you going to tell Harriet? Are you going to tell Harriet that it was Adam who killed her father?’
‘I don’t—’ you began.
But before you could finish the sentence, Harriet was there, in the room, her face grey. ‘I heard you. I heard what you just said. You and Adam killed my father and you pretended it was somebody else. How could you have done that? You killed my father, you killed him!’
‘I didn’t kill Cal. Adam killed him,’ said Lydia, her voice hard.
‘You were an accessory to murder,’ Harriet replied, drawing on her knowledge of TV drama.
‘Go back to bed, Harriet,’ you told her.
‘No! I’m not going anywhere,’ she answered, looking small and vulnerable in pyjamas printed with dachshunds. You tried to remove her, physically, from the room, but she pulled away from you. ‘I have to stay here. I want to stay! He was my father!’
‘Let her stay,’ I said, my own fury dissolving, as if it was now being channelled in and through Harriet. ‘She needs to hear this.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ you answered. ‘Not like this.’
‘Harriet needs to be here,’ I said.
‘No, she doesn’t,’ you repeated, and, taking Harriet’s arm, you tried once more to remove her.
‘I’m staying here,’ Harriet answered angrily. ‘Zora says I can stay.’ Harriet shook you off and took her seat at the table.
There was a heavy silence. Harriet was staring at Lydia as if she was trying to work out who she really was.
I turned to Lydia and said, ‘Okay, what are we going to do about all this? You keep saying you’re sorry, you regret it. Prove it. You have to go to the police. Tell them you lied in court.’
‘That’s perjury,’ Harriet whispered, running her fingers along the edges of the table.
‘You let an innocent man rot in prison,’ I continued. ‘You lied, Lydia, and Cal didn’t get justice. Because of you, Adam, who is a murderer, got off scot-free. What do you think that’s like for us? What do you think this will do to our parents – Harriet’s grandparents? They were coming to terms with Cal’s death. What will happen to them once they know there was no justice for Cal after all?’ I said it as baldly as I could, wanting to underscore it for Harriet. If she heard the unvarnished version, Harriet would probably sever ties with her birth mother permanently, the only punishment Lydia was ever likely to receive.
But you put your arm around Harriet, as if you could shield her from this knowledge.
‘There’s no point in me going to the police,’ Lydia replied. ‘Don’t you understand? They were the ones who made me lie. They’re hardly going to admit that, are they? And no one’s going to want to arrest Adam. He knows too many powerful people. Everyone is going to close ranks. Don’t you think I’d have put this right if I could? They’ll say I’m a liar. They’ll say that either I lied in court or I’m lying now. There isn’t any actual proof of anything.’
In the long silence that followed, I saw that Lydia was right.
I stood up. ‘Okay, you can go now. Just get out. We never want to see you again.’
Lydia got up shakily. Then she seemed to change her mind and she sat down again. She reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. ‘I’ve brought you something. It won’t prove Adam did it, or send him to prison, but it will put an end to his political career.’ She took out a photograph. She turned to Harriet. ‘I found this when my father died. I’ve brought it to show all of you how much I regret what happened.’
She placed the photo on the table. We stared at it. Adam was standing in a brightly lit room. He was wearing some kind of uniform. There was a swastika on his arm; the initials RBG were embroidered beneath it.
‘What does it mean, RBG?’ asked Harriet.
‘When he was a student, Adam and his friends set up a group – The Rivers of Blood Group. They believed Enoch Powell was right,’ Lydia answered.
‘Who’s Enoch Powell?’
‘A politician,’ you said. ‘He gave a racist speech before you were born. The papers called it the Rivers of Blood speech.’
‘The RBG decided there would have to be a violent solution to “the immigrant problem” as they called it,’ Lydia continued. ‘The group only lasted a couple of years. It never really went anywhere; it just petered out.’
We continued to stare at the image. We pictured Cal lying in a pool of blood, his head broken. We thought of the last time we’d seen Adam Russell, at Lydia’s house. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to play the race card,’ he’d said.
It was evidence. Adam Russell had lied in the House when he’d said he’d never been part of a far-right organisation. He would be forced to resign. He would never lead his party; he would never lead his country. His books would be taken off the shelves. He would fade into obscurity – or, more probably, faint notoriety. It wouldn’t get justice for Cal and it wouldn’t clear Christopher Walker’s name. But it was something. And it was all we had.
Harriet looked at Lydia. She whimpered softly and I saw that anger had turned to pain. ‘You left me when I was a baby. You didn’t care about me. You protected Adam because he was your cousin. Your cousin mattered to you more than me. You let my father be killed and you let somebody else take the blame. I am never, ever going to forgive you,’ she said, blinking back her tears.
There was a photograph. We sent it to the papers, you and me. On every front page there was an image of Adam Russell, standing to attention in a uniform.